Amanda J Evans

9 May 2019

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Writing courses are great but not everyone is in a position to travel to Dublin or various locations around the country to attend them. Some can’t afford the expense either. Luckily, there are other options and it seems more and more online writing courses and events are popping up. In this week’s Really Useful Links column, I’ve decided to take a look at some of the options available to both beginner and advanced writers as well as some writing events that can be attended online. There are paid courses as well as free college style courses open to everyone.

https://www.creativewriting.ie/online-writing-courses/ Online Writing Courses: You’ll find a full list of online writing courses here given by some well-known Irish authors. Everything from Beginners Creative Writing to Writing for Children with Oisin McGann. There’s even a Begin your Novel course with Maria Hoey. These are paid courses with a restriction on the number of participants. Each week you receive exercises to complete and feedback will be provided.

http://bigsmokewritingfactory.com/online-classes/ Big Smoke Writing Factory: These writing courses for beginners and advanced writers allow you to learn week by week with feedback provided by the facilitators. There’s even a novel submission preparation course with Claire Hennessy. The courses are delivered in modules which include exercises that are then sent to the instructor.

https://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/ The Manuscript Wishlist #MSWL: If you’re at the submission stage of your writing you are probably already familiar with the #MSWL Twitter tag and they have now started doing live videos with agents. You can watch free clips of the classes or pay for the classes and view the whole event and even participate in the Live Q&As. These live interviews and talks with agents are a great way to get some inside knowledge.

https://indulgeinwriting.com/ Indulge in Writing Crime Procedurals: This is a public event for crime writers or those hoping to write crime. You get to watch an interactive, live, online event and find out about parking fines, police cars, uniforms, stations and ranks, domestic violence, murder investigations and much more from Casey King. This is a live recorded online event which you will have access to so you can watch it over again to take notes too.

https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=writing Free Writing Courses at Coursera: There are over 329 writing courses listed at Coursera. I’ve taken a number of these and love the video format of the lessons. It feels as if you are sitting talking with the instructor and you can re-watch them as often as you like and take notes. The courses are free to take if you don’t want a certificate or to have feedback on assignments. They cover plot, character, setting and description, writing for young readers, style, essay writing, memoir, world building, and much more. You an access all the courses on desktop or on mobile or tablet using the free Coursera app.

See here for a full list of Writing.ie organisation members that provide writing courses.

I hope you enjoy these links and I look forward to bringing you some more Really Useful Links next week. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, get in touch and I will see what I can do.

About the author

Amanda J Evans is an award-winning Irish author of YA and Adult romance in paranormal and fantasy genres. Growing up with heroes like Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones, her stories centre on good versus evil with a splice of love and magic thrown in too. Her books have all won awards and her latest novella, Hear Me Cry, won the Book of the Year Award at the Dublin Writers Conference 2018. Amanda has been featured in a number of poetry anthologies in 2017 and 2018 including A Bowl of Irish Stew, a charity anthology for Pieta House and her short story Moonlight Magic was included in the Owl Hollow Press Anthology, Under the Full Moon’s Light, published in October 2018. Amanda is currently polishing her novel, Winterland, which will be submitted to agents and publishers in 2019, and is also working on a Bronte inspired story for an anthology due for publication in 2020. Amanda is also the author of Surviving Suicide: A Memoir from Those Death Left Behind, published in 2012. You can find out more on her website www.amandajevans.com, Facebook and Twitter: @amandajevans

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